On Lyon, Part 2

So, I Googled ‘mary lyon thomas connecticut’ and clicked on the first result, a Wikipedia page for the Thomas Lyon House.   I have to say, discovering some of my ancestors have Wikipedia pages is kind of cool.

More to the point for this post…My 7x great-grandmother, Mary Lyon, who was married to Joseph Stedwell, was born in 1649 in Stamford, CT.  She was the only child of Thomas Lyon and Martha Winthrop.  She was about 4 years old when her mother died and was then raised with her half-siblings by her stepmother, Mary Hoyt.  She didn’t forget her heritage however; in a an assertive move following the bequest from her father of only a share of movable property, Mary pursued a claim on land that had gone to her half-brothers.  She went to court with the claim that a portion of her father’s land came to him through his marriage to his first wife, Mary’s mother.  The court agreed and she received payment in exchange for a quitclaim.  You go, girl!

Thomas Lyon, the first immigrant of this line of my Lyon heritage, was born in England about 1621 and it was supposed he was the brother of two other Lyons who immigrated, Richard and Henry.  (Henry was in my post earlier this week.)  It is known that Thomas was in Stamford, Connecticut by 1647.  At that time he was married to Martha Winthrop and wrote a letter to her grandfather, Gov. John Winthrop of Salem, MA, concerning the possibility of a bequest from her grandmother who had recently died.  Apparently there were complications at hand because of Mary’s mother’s marital situation (she married a second time while still married to a husband who was deranged) and because of Martha’s very poor health (They hoped for means to assist with her care). Fortunately there exist several letters Thomas and Martha sent to her grandfather and her uncle, John Winthrop, Jr, that give an interesting picture of the times and especially of the circumstances faced by Quakers.  (And include the entertaining spelling where Rhode Island is Road Island and Greenwich is Greenage.)  Thomas died in Greenwich, CT in 1690.

As I prepared this post, I received my first issue (Summer 2011) of NEHGS’s American Ancestors.  As I skimmed through the issue before settling down to read more thoroughly, I spotted a listing on page 56 in the Family Focus section under Family Associations.  It seems the Lyon(s) Families Association is sponsoring analyses of DNA test results.  Included in this listing was this tidbit of information:  The long-held presumption about the relationship of the three Lyon brothers was inaccurate.  It turns out Richard and Henry are connected to a fourth Lyon immigrant, William, and none of them are connected to Thomas.  

Were You Lyon Then, Or Are You Lyon Now?

I’ve moved from my 6x greats to 7x, but I almost missed one 6x great-grandmother because the last name is the same as a 7x time great-grandmother (although from different lines).  I’m going to slip back to the six level for this post.

I found little information about my 6x great-grandmother, Joanna Lyon, other than that she was born to Benjamin Lyon and Bethia Condit in Lyons Farms, NJ, probably around 1691.  Most of the biographical sources actually were more about her husband, Joseph Prudden, than about her.   She was married before 1720 when her married name appears in her father’s will.  Her father gave her land and 15 pounds.  She died sometime before her husband’s death in 1776 (in 1761 according to the Lyon(s) Families Association), inferred from the fact that she was not mentioned in her husband's will.

Benjamin was born about 1668 in Elizabethtown or Newark, NJ to Henry Lyon and Elizabeth Bateman.  He was an influential citizen--a surveyor of Elizabethtown, a member of the Assembly, a Justice of the Peace--all over a ten year period.  Based on his will, he also owned a significant amount of land.

According to published genealogies, Henry Lyon was born in 1628 in Perthshire, Scotland, but I’m not confident that the date and location have actually been documented. Henry does appear in the records of the First Church of Milford, CT in 1649 when he became a member.  He later traveled to Fairfield where his brother, Richard, lived and there married Elizabeth Bateman in 1652.  He was dismissed to the Fairfield Church in 1654.  From there, Henry and his family moved to New Jersey.  He was Newark NJ’s first Treasurer and first innkeeper.  Then on to Elizabethtown, where in 1675 he was a General Assembly member, later a judge, Justice of the Peace, a Commissioner, among other public positions.  He owned land in Newark and Elizabeth, and between the two an area known as Lyons Farms.  He died in 1703.

It is now known the three volumes of the Lyon Memorial have errors, not surprising because family tradition and assumption is the basis for much of the early years.  The Lyon(s) Families Association has sponsored DNA analysis, so I know efforts are being made to evaluate Lyon lineage.  At one time it was thought Henry was a brother to another of my Lyon ancestors, Thomas, but DNA results show that is not true.  So many town records have been lost as a result of war, fire, and other disasters, I’m not not sure it will ever be possible to know the truth with any sense of reliability.